Well, it's a big heavy line, and you operate the nigger — capstan it's also called — by steam. You wrap your line around that and keep taking in the slack, and that draws up them things.

Usage notes

The word "nigger" is one of the most offensive taboo words in the English language, especially in the United States. In a study by Kristy Beers Fägersten, Americans rated nigger the most offensive word, more offensive than cunt.[1] A study by New Zealand's Broadcasting Standards Authority found that nigger was the second-most offensive word in New Zealand (after cunt), offending 66% of people,[2] and a similar study by several British broadcasting organizations found that "nigger" offended 68% of Brits and was the fifth most offensive word in the UK (after cunt, motherfucker, fuck, and wanker).[3]

There have been efforts by those of African descent to reclaim the word (especially in the form nigga), but these efforts are controversial, and some people do not believe it is able to be reclaimed, due to its fraught history and continued derogatory usage. Usage by non-blacks is almost invariably highly offensive.

"Nigger" has derogatory connotations, suggesting not only negatively-perceived darkness of skin, but general lack of intelligence; it is furthermore associated with the era of white colonization of Africa and enslavement of Africans and African Americans.

To blunt its force, the word is frequently censored in direct quotations or euphemistically referred to as the "n-word".

Verb

(transitive,dated) To clear land by laying light pieces of round timber across the trunks of the trees and setting fire to them at the point of contact, by which means the trees are slowly burned through.

[…] he resorted to the practice of “niggering,” as it is called: which is simply laying light pieces of round timber across the trunks of the trees and setting fire to them at the point of contact; by which means the trees are slowly burned through.

The operation was this: they placed smaller logs and dry rubbish across the log and applied fire to them; this was called “niggering”.

1956, Joseph Kirkland, Zury: the meanest man in Spring County: a novel of western life, University of Illinois Press, page 40:

All day long his axe rang through the frosty air as he felled saplings for the fence and stripped them from fuel for the “niggering” fires.

1980, Elaine Hedges, William Hedges, Land and imagination: the rural dream in America, Hayden Book Co., page 69:

This means subduing and taming the forest itself—the central drama of The Fields—performing the hard labor of hacking the trees and “niggering” and burning the butts in order to get to the rich black soil underneath.